Most Popular

She meets with male students out in the hallway to avoid awkward personal space issues.

“The lighting isn't great, but you deal with it,” Espinola said of her office. “They're definitely small and very old and could stand some Clorox.”

With an academic space deficit of about 1.2 million square feet, UTSA officials have made their case for netting capital funding, known as tuition revenue bonds, to the University of Texas System regents, who Wednesday agreed to forward it in a long list of others to the Legislature.

State lawmakers have been reluctant to authorize tuition revenue bonds since 2006 and cut about $1 billion in higher education funding from a two-year state budget during the last session.

Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, has filed a bill to authorize the bonds, which she has done in past sessions only to see it sink.

“It's always an uphill battle,” Zaffirini said in a recent interview. “But that doesn't mean we won't try.”

University systems issue the bonds and pledge revenues, including tuition revenue, to pay the debt. But in practice, the state reimburses bond payments from general revenue.

For instance, if approved, UTSA's $92.75 million science building would require $16.17 million in debt payments over the 2014-15 biennium.

Two UT Health Science Center at San Antonio projects also made the regents' list Wednesday — an $8 million Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies laboratory and a $6 million Diabetes Institute of South Texas to be located in Laredo.

Texas A&M University-San Antonio has two bond projects on its own wish list — a $70 million science and technology building and a $16.5 million infrastructure project including a central plant.

“We have all our science and technology ... at Brooks City-Base, where we are leasing land,” A&M-San Antonio President Maria Hernandez Ferrier said. “This building would allow us to make a really big first step on consolidating our campus.”

If a building is needed and “if you structure it right and you get a really low interest rate, (tuition revenue bonds) are a prudent way to have long-term financing for a long-term asset,” Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, said earlier this month.

On Thursday, Branch said that in light of current revenue estimates, a cash investment by the state might be an alternative to bonds.

Also interviewed earlier, Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, chairman of the higher education panel, said “there's increasing resistance from people like me on bonded debt.”

“You go and add more bonded debt on more bonded debt ... it gets nations in trouble and it can get states in trouble,” he said. “If there are alternatives, we need to explore them.”

As Texas works to lure companies, colleges must produce an educated workforce to stay competitive, Ferrier said. A&M-San Antonio's science and technology building is “key to that process,” she said.

At UTSA, Espinola eyed her undersized office, thought about the university's request for tuition revenue bonds and said, “They should get it.”